Of Princes and Frogs
by rurouni madness-battousai obsession
Summary: James ends up making a bet with Snape that he can get Lily to go the ball and kiss him before the month is over. But Lily hates James. Things go from bad to worse when James also accidentally drinks a potion that turns him into a frog at night!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, his mother or father, or any other wonderful characters created by the phenomenal Jo Rowling!**

**Hey everyone! This is rurouni madness-battousai obsession and I'm proud to say that this is my first Lily/James fic! I've always been intriqued by the couple ever since OotP so here is my little idea of how I think they got together...**

"Of Princes and Frogs"

James Potter twiddled with his quill and tried really hard to listen to what Professor Binns was saying, which was hard to do anyway considering the teacher's low droning voice. But his eyes kept on glancing at the redhead in front of him who was furiously taking notes.

He glanced around the room and then he nudged his best friend who was asleep with his black hair splattered on top of Advanced Studies of Goblin Attacks in the 16th Century. When the boy didn't respond James nudgedthe boyharder and he whispered, "Padfoot!"

Sirius quietly mumbled "Mom stop your screaming; I'll be up in a minute." But he quickly fell back into a deep sleep.

James groaned softly and stomped his foot onto Sirius's left one which promptly caused him to wake up and holler.

The whole class turned around, most of which had been sleeping, and stared at the two marauders.

Professor Binns turned his transparent face around and looked at the two boys. "What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?"

James face turned a bit pink and thinking quickly on his feet said. "Sirius thinks that it's outrageous with what happened with the goblins!"

Professor Binns seemed to raise a translucent eyebrow andlook more intently at the boys, "Oh really?"

Sirius, quickly catching on replied, "Yes sir! It's outrages!"

"Well keep your opinions to yourself boys, this isn't a place where we can have people blurting out all of the time," he said in a monotone voice and turned back to the board and continued the lecture.

When Sirius was surethe teacherwasn't paying attention he turned to James and quietly snapped, "What the bloody hell did you do that for?"

"Do you see Evans over there?" Jamespointed at the redheaded girl in the front of the class who was trying to stifle a yawn.

Sirius glanced at the girl but turned back to James. "Of course I see her! She's sat there all year! What's the point of waking me up?"

"It's just… it's just… never mind." James turned away.

"No! I want a big explanation on why you woke me up like that!"

"It's… It's about Evans," He whispered.

"Not again!" Sirius said a bit too loudly and James kicked him again. He quieted down a bit and repeated himself. "Evans? What about her _this _time?"

James sighed, "I don't know! Maybe it's the way her hair reflects the sunlight. Or it could be the way she sounds when she gets a problem in Potions right; I don't know!"

"What in the world are you talking about, Potter? Don't tell me you like her again? You tried all of fifth and sixth year to convince her to go out with you! Get a clue! It isn't going to work!" Sirius harshly said in an undertone.

"I know! That's my problem! What's wrong with me, Padfoot?"

Sirius rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. They sat in silence for the rest of the class period. This was one problem the infamous marauders couldn't solve.

* * *

James and Sirius had both slowly drifted off and when they finally woke up the last people in the room were filing out. James rubbed his eyes and caught a flash of red go past him.

It was Lily.

James hastily picked up his books and managed to hit Sirius over the head.

"Damn it, Prongs! What in the world…?"

But James wasn't listening. He wasn't about to loose Lily. She had scurried quickly out of the room because her Potions class was on the other side of the building and she didn't want to be late! However being on the Quidditch team had given James strong and fast legs so he was eventually able to catch up to her.

"Evans!" He shouted when she had finally started to walk more slowly.

Theyfinally reachedan empty hallway that only had a few students scurrying about in it. Lily was headed to a highly advanced Potions course that Slughorn only taught to just a few really gifted students so there were only a few people in that section at Hogwarts.

Lily looked around her to make sure no one was listening in and replied without turning around. "What do you want, Potter?"

"Well I was just wondering if… well…" James stammered and his face turned a brilliant shade of crimson.

She swung around in a furry and glared at him. "If you're asking me out again the answer is no! How many times do I have to tell you that I can't stand egotistical jerks like you or Black! I don't see how Remus can stand you!"

James felt a sharp twinge of jealously at how she addressed Remus by his first name. She had always called him 'Potter'. The only time she had ever called him James was when he had "accidentally" dumped his pumpkin juice all over her new robes at the coming back feast in their sixth year. The only reason she had called him James was because she was screaming out his full name along with some not so appealing adjectives.

James felt really insulted by her current reaction though! He never gave up, worked hard, showed dedication and he had looks that could kill! But she dared to turn him down each time! What was wrong with her!

"What's wrong with you?" he barked.

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?" Lily's voice was starting to elevate to a dangerous level. "You're the one who wouldn't leave me alone! You're the one who is constantly embarrassing me in front of my friends! I don't even have that many friends because all the girls in Gryffindor seem to like you and they're jealous of me! I honestly don't know why they would fall for such an immature intolerable," she thought for a few seconds for the proper word,"…FROG! But the thing is that you'll never turn into a prince no matter how many times you get kissed!"

James smirked, "Well you've never kissed me so how would you know for sure?" he stepped closer and Lily did the only thing she could think of; slap him.

"I hate you!" She screamed and ran towards the dungeon as the sound of the slap echoed through the corridors.

He gingerly touched to painful sting on his right cheek and watched her red hair flow behind her. He sighed and muttered to himself "Damn it James! You messed up again!"

He heard snickering behind him and James swerved around only to see Severus Snape standing there. His greasy hair rested on his shoulders and he sneered, "Potter, got yourself in trouble with that Mudblood again?"

James glared at him, reached for his wand and put it to Snape's neck. "Don't you EVER call her that again!"

Snape appeared to look unfazed by it and simply said, "Strange that that Mudblood seems to like me more than you. That's pretty bad considering that both of you are Head Boy and Head Girl,not to mentionI despise her sort."

The only reason that James didn't use one of the Unforgivables on Snape right then was because it would severelly damage his reputation as a Gryffindor and his honor as a marauder.

"_Snivellus_, I swear if you say one more word…"

"…Evans will hate you even more," Snape coolly replied and James backed off a bit from the shock of Snape's words. "I'll make a bet with you, Potter. If I win, you can never ever go near Evans again."

"Why should you care if I go near Evans?" James asked suspiciously.

Snape twitched, "I don't like the hear your bickering and arguing. I can't stand both of your voices enough as it is, but to hear both of you screaming at each other disturbs my inner-peace."

James knew that this probably wasn't the complete answer but he wanted to know more about the bet. "What do I get if I win?"

"I'll stop calling her a Mudblood and I'll leave both of you alone."

James nodded, "Okay, I'll take up thebet. What is it?"

Snape smirked again, "You have to get her to go to the ball with you AND she has to kiss you before midnight at the ball."

"What?" James yelped. "How can I do that? It's only a month away!"

"Too bad. You agreed to it. Now I'm off to my advanced potions class with Evans, see you later, Potter." He spat out the last word and slithered away into the dungeon. James had to use all he had to not run after him and strangle him.

He stood still for a moment with a clinched fists but when he glanced at his watch he was shocked. He pivoted on his left foot and raced up to Flitwick's class for which he was ten minutes late for.

* * *

"Damn James! I've never seen the little guy chew someone out so much before!" Sirius whispered to James in the Gryffindor common room as people started to file out and go to bed.

"Sirius, please don't call Professor Flitwick 'the little guy'. It's really disrespectful." Remus said calmly while he continued to carefullypour the potion he was working on into a small drinking glass.

"Oh Moony come off it! You have to admit seeing Prongs cowering in fear of a man who's half his height was funny!" Sirius started to laugh so hard that he nearly fell out of his chair.

"It wasn't that funny, Sirius!" Remus said in a scolding tone but he couldn't hide the grin on his face.

"Not you too Moony!" James moaned and the two started laughing even harder. By that time the whole common room was empty and he was ready to go to sleep and take his ritual glass of water before bed.

"Wormtail, get me a glass or water, will ya?" James yawned and stretched while Peter scampered off to get the water.

"So what happened? Why were you so late?" Remus asked inquisitively.

"Well I was going after Evans…" he started.

The two other marauders groaned and slammed their heads on the table.

James continued, "Anyway, I was going to ask her out again, but she got mad at me and slapped me again."

"But that takes five minutes tops! I've timed you before!" Sirius exclaimed.

"That's no the only reason I was late," his patience for his best friend slowly fading away, "I also met up with _Snivellus_."

Sirius's eyes narrowed and Remus frowned. At that time Peter came in and James yanked the water from him and slammed it on the table.

"He called Evans _that word_ again and he told me he would stop if I made a bet with him."

Remus sighed, "Please James, don't tell me you agreed!"

"I did! I don't want him to disrespect her like that again! But unfortunately if he wins it I would stay away from Evans!"

"What was the bet, Prongs?" Peter squeaked.

"The bet was that I have to get Evans to go with me to the ball and I had to get her to kiss me before midnight that night!"

"That was a stupid bet, Prongs." Sirius said with the first bit of sense that James had ever seen him use, "You know that Evans hates you!"

"What am I supposed to do?" James flung his arms up and started to pace quickly.

"Well we are the marauders, we'll think of something," Remus said starting to gather his books and some of his potions material.

"BUT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?" James shouted. He quickly grabbed for his glass of water and started to drink from it.

Remus' face went white when he noticed what James was drinking. "James no! That's not your…"

He was cut off by a loud boom and a cloud of smoke that went around James. They all coughed tried to fan out the smoke.

When it was cleared out they saw James' clothes in a pile on the floor and on the pile of clothes was a small green frog.

**I hope that you liked it! I got the idea from a Superchick song called Princes and Frogs and I realized that it reminded me of James and Lily!**

**Please review and tell me if I should continue this little silly idea!**

**-rm/bo**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. It all belongs to the marvelous J. K. Rowing (and Warner Brothers)**

**AN: I know that it's been forever since I updated the story but here is finally the next chapter. I just got up this morning and felt like writing it…. So… here it is!**

**And I have to clear something up; James accepted the bet because his pride clouded his vision and he doesn't necessarily act like the smartest person around Snape. **

"Do something, Moony! Do something!" Sirius yelled as he shook the werewolf fervently. "Where's Prongs? And why is there a frog where he used to be? And now he doesn't have any clothes and we both know what happened last time Prongs went around Hogwarts without clothes!"

Remus shuddered remembering the experience.

"What do we do, Moony?" Peter echoed as tears started to fall down his chubby cheeks.

Remus sighed, "Both of you need to calm down!"

"We're gonna die! We're gonna die!" Sirius bellowed as he flung himself onto the couch and started to cry profusely which made Peter weep any harder.

Remus started to massage his temples. He silently waited for them to quiet down.

**30 minutes later**

….no such luck. For one of the first times in his life the quiet marauder raised his voice. "Quiet!"

The other two human mauraders stopped their mourning and turned around.

"What is wrong with you two? I've been trying to explain the story, and you won't let me!"

"Moony, quiet down. You might wake the rest of the dorm." Sirius whispered.

"ME?" Remus shouted. "We two are the ones weeping like Moaning Myrtle! But it doesn't matter anyway, I did a 'Muffliato' spell the second Padfoot started his third verse of 'Where is my Jamesy-poo?'"

"Hey! It was a good song!"

Before Remus could reply a redheaded girl walked through the portrait hole. She glared suspiciously at the three of them. "Where's Potter? He was supposed to be with me helping me patrol the halls! Peeves made another mess and I had to clean it up all by myself! What are all of you doing here this late anyway?"

"Nothing," they all replied in unison.

"Sure," she replied not trusting them in the slightest, "And whose frog is that?" She walked over to pick it up, but Sirius intercepted her.

"It's James' frog, he told us to look after it."

"Where is Potter?"

"Ummmm… he's… on a date!" Sirius beamed at his moment of true brilliance.

"That hypocrite! He just asked me out and just hours later he's having a midnight meeting with some sl… Anyway, just tell Potter that I'm very disappointed in him and I'm reporting this to the headmaster first thing in the morning!" She stormed off up the stairs to the girls' dormitory and slammed the door behind her.

Sirius sighed and turned back towards them only to be attacked by the frog. "Get it off!" Sirius roared. "Get it off!" Peter squealed as he attempted to help.

Remus groaned before gathering as much air as he could into his lungs and yelled "QUIET!"

The whole room became quiet for the first time in an hour and Remus walked over to Sirius and scraped the frog off his face. "This frog is James, Sirius! The potion that he drank was a transfiguration potion that Slughorn wanted me to prepare! It's the Calunios Potion. It turns any human into a frog!"

"But you don't take potions anymore."

"Yes I do! I might not be in the advanced class with Lily and Snape, but I do take the regular NEWT course!"

"Well then make a potion to turn him back!"

"That's the thing! I don't know how! The antidote is far more complicated then the regular potion itself. Only a real master knows how to fix it. Not just a master in potions, but a master in transfiguration!"

The room was still. No one had ever seen Moony yell like that without him being in his werewolf form. Not to mention no one knew how to deal with the problem at hand.

Suddenly Sirius got a look of dawning. "Minnie!" He took James out of Remus's hands and ran towards McGonagall's room.

"WAKE UP!" Sirius pounded on the door.

The door slammed open and Sirius was greeted with a sight that made him scream like a little girl and shield his eyes.

"BLACK!" McGonagall shrieked with her face covered in a green mask that made her look more or less like a strangely shaped troll "What the hell are you doing waking me up in the middle of the night?"

"Please, Proffessor," Remus pleaded, "We have a problem. We need your help and probably Slughorn's too. I had to make the Calunios Potion in class and James accidentally drank it."

McGonagall gasped as Sirius handed her James, who seemed to snuggle up to McGonagall in an attempt to get her to sympathize with him. She handed the green marauder back to Sirius. "Just give me a moment." Took out her wand, did a nonverbal spell and her nightdress quickly changed into her normal teaching garbs.

"Ummm… professor," Peter whispered. "You might want to wash your face off."

The teacher gave him a cold glare that would put Severus Snape in his place, did another spell and the gunky covering was gone.

888

Slughorn sat relaxingly on a fluffy couch in his chamber reading a copy of 'How to Have Young Witches and Wizards Meet Their Full Potential' when a sharp rap came at the door.

He groaned. The Slytherin head of house knew who that knock belonged too. Whenever there was an emergency staff meeting they always sent Minerva down to get him. He heaved his bulk off the couch and opened the door, only to be surprised by not only Minerva but three students and a frog.

"We have a problem, Horace. It seems Mr. Potter wasn't paying attention and drank Mr. Lupin's Calunios Potion which you assigned to him.

The potions teacher looked concerned, "Dear, dear, this certainly is a problem… I don't have any antidote on hand at the moment."

"Well then make on!" Sirius commanded as he stepped closer to the balding teacher.

"I'm afraid it's not that simply, my boy. The most I can do is make a temporary remedy. The actual antidote takes a month to create."

"Well do you have enough of the temporary remedy to last for a month?" Remus questioned.

"Well it's simple to make so it's not a problem. But the thing is, is that it only works of for 16 hours of the day. So if he took it at 6:00 every morning, it would only work til 10:00 PM."

"Well that doesn't sound that bad…" Remus reasoned. "I mean no one would see him then anyway and we'll make sure that no one comes in our dorm after 10:00…"

Sirius however looked a bit more panicky "But what if some emergency happens that makes everyone evacuate? What if Moaning Murtle tries to take over Hogwarts? What if Peeves gathers the house-elves in a revolt against the students? What if someone puts a spell on all the females in Hogwarts that causes them to go through PMS simultaneously? And then people will go, where's James? Where's James? I mean we all know how the females will want to attack James first!"

"Black, somehow I doubt that's ever going to happen," McGonnagal moaned as she rubbed her temples.

Slughorn meanwhile had gotten out a cauldron and was mixing up the temporary remedy. "Now," he said calmly, "You have to remember that you can only take one of these a day or there will be serious repercussions. Is that clear?"

"I'll have repercussions? What?" The dog-like marauder joked right before his head of house slapped him on the back of the head.

"Don't worry. I'll make sure he only takes one a day and at the right time." Remus confidently stated. It was his job to take over this being the most responsible of the marauders.

A few minutes later it was ready. Slughorn handed a vial to Remus. "I'll give you a new one each day after class, just make sure you wait until everyone else is out of the room."

Remus nodded.

"Now I want all of you to get to bed as swiftly as possible. I'm going to talk with Professor Slughorn for a while to discuss Mr. Potter's condition. Take Mr. Potter with you and go back to your dorm-room and head straight to bed no short-cuts." The Gryffindor head of house snapped.

Sirius was starting to get the strangest suspicions that maybe the professor didn't have the utmost confidence in him. "Come on Minnie, don't you trust us?"

It seemed that these suspicions were true because she glared at him and repeated herself "NO shortcuts."

The mauraders left the room and were about to turn the corner out of the dungeons when they ran into one certain slimy git as James would call him.

"Oh look, it's Potter's little cronies. What are you doing down her so late at night and why aren't you with that sniveling coward of a leader?" Severus Snape sneered.

Holding Sirius back from punching the greasy boy, Remus coolly replied, "We came down with Professor McGonagall for your information on a subject we're not allowed to discuss and James is up in the common room planning another attempt to ask out Lily Evans. What are you doing, Snape?"

"That Mudblood isn't even worthy of Potter," the Slytherin scoffed which caused the frog to almost jump out of Sirius' death grip. "For your information I was going to ask Slughorn a question about potions, he said we could contact him at all times and this question's been nagging at me for a while."

This sounded a bit suspicious but Remus knew that it wouldn't be smart to prod. They were about to leave when suddenly Snape noticed the frog.

"What's with the frog?"

"What's with the homework question, almighty potions master?" Sirius mocked.

Snape just smirked and replied. "Well I guess we're at a standstill. But be warned. I will find out." He walked past the group with his black cloak bellowing behind him.

Sirius clenched his James-less fist and looked like he was about to attack but Remus gave him a threatening look and whispered, "It isn't worth it Padfoot."

Sirius snorted and they all headed back to the common room. It seemed that by the time they were half-way there Sirius had forgotten the moment with Snape because he was singing a very loud rendition of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.'

Not taking McGonnagal's advice in the slightest, the maurader's (or mainly Sirius) found every possible hallway that might, or might not take them to the common room. So three hours later they finally arrived at the common room and it was already 5:45.

Remus groaned. He had hoped to get a little sleep because of the Defense against the Dark Arts test he had today but that was hopeless. "Well we might as well change into another one of our robes and get ready for class."

Sirius grinned and bonded up the stairs in front of them they all got changed and were back in the common room at 5:59. They all sat down in front of the fireplace as Remus tipped the potion into the amphibian's mouth. Instantly the frog morphed into a frazzled and exhausted-looking James Potter.

And not a moment too soon. Footsteps came from the girls' dormitory and a certain Lily Evans entered the room in full robes ready for the day of classes with a potions book hugged to her chest. She took one look at James and glared.

"You look tired, Potter. Have fun with your latest toy? It looks like you didn't get any sleep last night."

"I swear Evans, I didn't…"

"Don't even bother making up a story, you filthy hypocrite," She then headed back up the stairs to the dormitory.

"I hate you, Padfoot."

**AN: There you go! So how do you like it? I think I liked the first chapter better, but this one was to just push the story along….**

**Oh by the way, I know that they probably don't have 'Advanced' classes and 'Regular' classes but I had to put Remus in potions without him being in class with Snape and Lily for reasons that will be revealed later on in the story**

**Please review! The more I get, the more likely I'm not going to forget that this story exists and take months to update it…**


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